Sunday Rerun: Haboob booboo

Gomez

Pedro Gomez of ESPN was just doing his job the other night, reporting that the lights went out at the Arizona Diamondbacks' stadium because of a haboob going through downtown Phoenix, knocking out power lines and causing havoc.

A haboob is defined as "a violent and oppressive wind blowing in summer, especially in Sudan, bringing sand from the desert." The part about the desert explains why we don't use the word "haboob" so often in Maryland, being far from desert lands as we are.

But anyway, back in Phoenix, where the desert is close at hand, a haboob came along and knocked out the power and Pedro was the victim of an all-time autocorrect mixup:

Pedro Gomez

✔@pedrogomezESPN

@Rangers and @Dbacks delayed in downtown Phoenix because a baboon went through town and overloaded the grid, knocking some lights out.

12:09 AM - Jul 31, 2018

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Those doggone baboons! 

Incidentally, you may recall an incident (that's why I said 'incidentally') a few years ago in which a haboob ran through Lubbock, Texas (home town of Buddy Holly) and a few Tex Types felt their ten-gallon hats getting way too tight when the local meteorologist used that Arabic-derived word to tell them about it.  One of them wrote: "In Texas, nimrod, this is called a sandstorm. We’ve had them for years! If you would like to move to the Middle East you can call this a haboob. While you reside here, call it a sandstorm. We Texans will appreciate you."

Such hostility! And Nimrod was a man described in the Bible as "the first on earth to be a mighty man" and "a mighty hunter before the Lord" so using his name in derision is sort of dumb, like confusing a sandstorm, which covers a large area, with a haboob, which by definition covers a narrow zone.

We often borrow words from other nations to describe weather phenomena, such as a tsunami, the Japanese term for a seismic sea wave, or drumpf, the German term for a large pile of unpleasantness that drops in unexpectedly.